The Asus ROG G750JX is the latest 17.3" Republic of Gamers laptop and it has Intel Haswell inside along with the very impressive NVIDIA GTX 770M with 3 gigs of DDR5 VRAM. This quad core beast can chew through the latest games on high settings without breaking a sweat. It stays remarkably quiet and cool when gaming: yes you'll hear the fan but it won't roar and blot out your game's audio track, no it won't toast your hands or singe the hair off your legs. Though at 8.75 lbs. you probably won't be gaming with the G750JX on your lap.

As ever, with a Republic of Gamers machine, you get good value and our 2.4GHz Core i7-4700HQ model with a matte full HD display, 12 gigs of RAM, the GTX 770M graphics card, WiFi 802.11AC, DVD burner and a 750 gig 7200 RPM HDD retails for $1,499. You'll find other variants, including models with a gloss 3D full HD display, an SSD plus HDD setup, a Blu-Ray drive and up to 16 gigs of RAM (32 gigs is max for this machine). Bluetooth 4.0, an excellent backlit keyboard, stereo speakers with a subwoofer, an optical drive and a full HD display are standard features. The ROG has two 2.5" drive bays and two easily accessible RAM slots (the other two slots require a lot of disassembly for access). It has 4 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt that worked fine with our Apple Thunderbolt Display.

For those on a tighter budget, Asus offers the G750JW with the 2GB NVIDIA GTX 765M graphics card and your choice of a 1600 x 900 or full HD display. Honestly, go for the G750JX- for $200 you'll get a graphics card that will keep you gaming further into the future, and the graphics card inside the ROG G750 isn't readily upgradable. For those with serious money to spend, the G750JH will have the top of the line NVIDIA GTX 780M with 4 gigs of DDR5 VRAM, and that will cost over $2,000.